LGBT

For the past many days, Democrats have been lending their efforts to enrollment events designed to help alert New Jerseyans to the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act, which ends on Sunday, Feb. 15th. Many of those events have been regional or targeted to specific parts of the population who may need additional help with the sign-up process.

Hundreds of photographs, papers and historical objects documenting the history of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are being added to the Smithsonian Institution's collection Tuesday, including items from the popular TV show "Will and Grace," the passport belonging to the first openly gay U.S. ambassador, and a tennis racket from transgender champion Renee Richards.

Martin Luther King, Jr once said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." No where does that inexorable trend more apply than same-sex marriage. Slowly one after another gay marriage ban has fallen in the courts. This time it was Kentucky's turn.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday announced her support for gay marriage for the first time after getting an endorsement from the nation's largest LGBT advocacy organization in her bid for re-election.

According to a civil rights lawsuit brought by Jon Carmichael's parents, a few days before Jon killed himself, football players at his middle school in northern Texas had attacked him in the locker room, stripped him nude, tied him up, placed him in a trash can, and called him a "fag," "queer," and "homo," while the whole event was videotaped and later posted on YouTube.

With same-sex marriage bans being ruled unconstitutional across the nation in rapid succession, Republican Colorado Attorney General John Suthers' stubborn insistence on defending Amendment 43, the same-sex marriage ban in the Colorado constitution, is becoming much harder to defend politically. Of course, that only means he's doubling down on those efforts.

George Takei said he needed courage and anger to come out as gay and to join the equal rights movement for sexual minorities in the U.S., and he hopes his Japanese counterparts will do the same to make their society more equal. Takei said he has noticed a movement beginning in Japan, though the country of his ancestry has a long way to go. He said Japanese people need to fight for their own rights and they need to be a bit angry, too.

Texans took to Yelp and social media outlets like Facebook to condemn an east Texas restaurant called Big Earl's, when the proprietor's daughter told a couple after they ate there, 'we don't like fags.' The couple was then asked never to return.